Police at Home of Colorado Suspect Disarm Major Threats

The authorities went about the delicate task of clearing dozens of booby traps and improvised explosives at the apartment of James Holmes in Aurora, Colo.Credit
Matthew Staver for The New York Times

AURORA, Colo. — Law enforcement officials said Saturday that they had successfully disabled the most dangerous explosives and incendiary devices at the apartment of James Holmes, the man accused of killing 12 people at a movie theater here.

But officials cautioned that dangers remained for the specialists who must enter the apartment to collect evidence.

One crucial task, officials said, was to piece together how the suspect was able to accumulate the weapons used in the shooting as well as the materials needed to assemble the complex web of traps and explosive devices in the apartment.

The Aurora police chief, Dan Oates, said at a news conference on Saturday that the goal of the person who booby-trapped the apartment was apparent: to kill whoever entered. And he said that the most likely targets were the police and first responders.

James F. Yacone, the special agent in charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, described the challenges that explosive specialists faced as they tried to disarm the various weapons in the apartment.

The first step, he said, was to figure out how to get a remotely controlled robot through a front door that had been wired with an improvised explosive device.

Once that trigger was disarmed, around 10:3o a.m. local time, and the robot entered the apartment, the next challenge was to render harmless a potent cocktail known as a hypergolic mixer — essentially fuel and an oxidizer that when mixed have a violent reaction.

At each stage, they used the robot to remove evidence from the apartment so that they could analyze what they were dealing with to better understand the best way to proceed.

“It was an extremely dangerous environment,” Mr. Yacone said.

After the field tests, the evidence removed is being sent to F.B.I. headquarters in Quantico, Va., for further analysis, Mr. Yacone said. He declined to give specifics as to the components used in either the explosive devices or the incendiary devices.

Multiple containers were rendered safe, Mr. Yacone said. “It went very, very well,” he said, but he noted that the threat has not been completely eliminated.

While the devices were sophisticated, Mr. Yacone said, much of the information about how to assemble them could have been found on the Internet.

Chief Oates said that they were getting a better picture of how the gunman had acquired all the deadly equipment, including four weapons bought legally over the last 60 days and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition purchased legally over the Internet.

For more than four months, Chief Oates said, the suspect had been getting large mail-order deliveries both at his home and at his place of work.

“What we are seeing here is evidence of some calculation and deliberation,” he said.

In the city of Aurora, initial spasms of shock and anger turned to raw, open sadness on Saturday as the police completed the grim task of informing families whose relatives were among at least a dozen people who died in the shooting early Friday during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Many people took to Facebook and Twitter to express their grief, a sign of the increasing importance of social media during mass tragedies.

More than 50 people were injured, some critically, during the shooting that upended an evening of excitement that brought families and many young people out for the highly anticipated Batman sequel.

The authorities had worked through the night to identify those killed, and by Saturday morning they said they had notified all the families of victims, including some who had been holding out hope that those missing had been spared. There were still 11 people hospitalized in critical condition, the authorities said.

Before the authorities released a list of the dead, many family members came forward on their own to identify the victims.

Among those identified so far were a 6-year-old, two active-duty servicemen, a 23-year-old community college student, a young man celebrating his 27th birthday, and a sports blogger who a month ago had narrowly avoided a shooting spree at a Toronto shopping mall.

Candlelight vigils were held across the city on Friday night and the tragedy prompted a rare bit of bipartisan accord in Washington.

Photo

James Holmes, 24, is seen in this undated handout picture released by the University of Colorado.Credit
Reuters

President Obama used his weekly radio address to again speak out on the shootings, saying, “Such evil is senseless — beyond reason.”

“If there’s anything to take away from this tragedy, it’s a reminder that life is fragile,” Mr. Obama said. “Our time here is limited, and it is precious. And what matters in the end are not the small and trivial things which often consume our lives. It’s how we choose to treat one another, and love one another. It’s what we do on a daily basis to give our lives meaning and to give our lives purpose. That’s what matters. That’s why we’re here.”

Speaker John A. Boehner gave the Republican response to the president’s radio address, saying that he had planned to speak on the economy, but instead directed his attention to the shootings.

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“Words cannot capture the horror, or make sense of something so senseless,” he said. “So I won’t try.”

Led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, law enforcement agents began early Saturday securing the area around the apartment.

Residents in five buildings surrounding Mr. Holmes’s were evacuated on Friday. Sixteen of the evacuated people were taken to shelter at Central High School, where 12 others joined them late Friday night after an unrelated fire at an Aurora apartment building forced them from their homes.

Throughout the afternoon, the authorities went about the delicate task of clearing dozens of other booby traps and improvised explosives.

With each controlled detonation, a low thud could be heard from across the street, where dozens of television cameras remained pointed up at the third-floor window, its glass smashed out and blinds blowing in the breeze.

There was fear that as they tried to disable the devices in the apartment, it might create a secondary explosion, damaging valuable evidence that might be inside the apartment. But the operation was initially successful, with no major explosions or fires.

By the afternoon, law enforcement officials said that many of the threats had been eliminated.

Officials did not release details about how they rendered the various devices safe, but law enforcement officials said that one method used was known as a “water shot,” in which a robot placed a tube of water near a device and, after backing away, set off a detonation.

The shooting stirred memories of the Columbine High School shooting, which took place just 20 miles from here.

“People in Colorado have really been through a lot between the recent wildfires, and now this theater shooting,” said Patricia D. Billinger, a local spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

At the apartment of the suspect, Mr. Holmes, local law enforcement officers and firefighters were being helped by explosives experts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as those from the A.T.F.

They faced a situation that Chief Oates said was unlike anything he had seen.

On Friday, he described an apartment littered with jars full of an unknown liquid, other jars full of ammunition and yet more filled with what he said looked like mortar rounds. A series of wires ran between the jars, evidently set to blow up should they be disturbed.

When the police arrested Mr. Holmes outside the movie theater where the shooting took place, he warned them that the apartment was rigged with explosives, the police said.

They swarmed his apartment complex around 2 a.m. Friday, evacuating neighbors and sealing off Mr. Holmes’s apartment. Residents from four other neighboring buildings were also evacuated.

The authorities said that in the last 60 days, Mr. Holmes had legally purchased four guns at local gun shops — an AR-15 assault rifle, two Glock .40-caliber handguns and a Remington 12-gauge shotgun — and acquired through the Internet more than 6,000 rounds of assorted ammunition.

Mr. Holmes is being held at the Arapahoe County Jail and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday morning.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, social media was a tool that people used to update others on their situation and talk about the horror they had witnessed.

“So sorry for your loss,” Debbie Byers Phillips wrote in a post. “We all grieve with you.”

Less than three hours after the shooting, at 3:13 a.m. Friday, Tony Hoang posted on his Facebook page, “I almost died.” Hours later, he added, “i still cant believe i got out alive.”

Correction: July 21, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the location of the F.B.I. headquarters. It is Quantico, Va., not Quanitco. It also misspelled

John Eligon reported from Aurora, Colo., and Marc Santora from New York. Reporting was contributed by Dan Frosch, Jack Healy, Erica Goode and Serge Kovaleski from Aurora, Colo.; and Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Jennifer Preston from New York.